The artillerymen are the first non-militia models I painted for my army. Painting Continental soldiers require a different tact than the militia. For starters they have a uniform. Using Tarleton’s Quarter as inspiration I devised a plan. Cohesiveness is very important to make the army look like it belongs together. Joining the disparate militia and regular soldiers in a unified appearance was made easy with a standard color palette. Blue, Brown, and Green are the primary three colors that appear on all of the figures. Some models have blue coats and green pants. Others have Brown coats and blue pants. But all of them have blue, brown, and green on each model.

The Continental soldiers would have a modified uniform. Their coats, shirts, etc would be blue. The trousers are brown and accessories will be green unless another color is more accurate. For example, obviously wooden accessories will be painted in brown instead of green. My standard base coat, ink wash, and drybrush hi light method was also used. All paints are GW.

The models were finally protected with a coat of gloss varnish followed by Testor’s Dullcote. You can see pictures below of the pre-varnished models followed by the completed battery. My apologies for the poor quality.

12 Comments on “Artillery Crew at the Ready”

They look good Jon! My first musketeer regiment is finished also. Well, they’re not based yet, but whatever. I just ordered enough figures for a grenadier regiment and an artillery unit. After this I’m thinking perhaps one more musketeer regiment and perhaps a small sized unit of Jaegers and my Hessian brigade will be complete.

Thanks Adrian. Are you planning in using any cavalry? How many bases of 4 will you have of the Jaegers? How many cannon are in your battery?

I figured out that so far I have 2 Militia Regiments and 1 Artillery Battery. All told I have 30 Militia soldiers, 4 2/3 Command groups (Leader on foot, Musician, and Standard Bearer…one group is lacking a Leader), 3 Officers on horseback (to be used as army general), and 1 6pdr with 4 crew.

Moving forward I plan to get a cavalry regiment plus some Continental infantry to bolster my militia.

The Hessian brigade won’t have cavalry attached. As best I can tell from limited research and sparse knowledge (I’m much better with ACW and Napoleonics) Hessians didn’t field any cavalry in the colonies.

The next group I do will be British and I may include a small cavalry unit there.

As for basing, I’m thinking, as we said 16-18 figures for a normal sized unit. I will be going with 16, basing 4 figures each on 40mm square bases. The artillery is just one gun representing a battery, per the rules.

The Field Jaeger battalion I think will be a small sized, skirmish capable unit. Probably 12 figures in their fancy green and red coats.

I am afraid that I have stalled due to the HEAT. I will have two Battalions/units of British 20 and 16 men each on four man bases. I will cast up two horses for you gun Jonathan tomorrow. My daughter is excited. FIRED! She is a litle on the Piro side. As soon as I finish the British, I will order some French.

Oh, for cavalry. I would take a peek at those other rules that I sent with the Couriers. They have charts for the proper mix of Cavalry vs Infantry. You generally see dragoons or light horse. I am basing this on research I can barely remember from the 70’s. My first armies where Airfix AWI. It is good for beginners. Small battles and low cavalry counts. Saves on painting and money.

Sorry for having abrupted our last conversation when you turned up with pictures. That didn’t mean anything, honestly. Thus, switching over from there I post a comment here. First off, good to see you up and painting. That’s the spirit!

Then, and please don’t take it for nit-picking, I seem to have missed your initial thoughts on building these AWI forces. Are they meant to be an accurate representation of historical formations or do you allow yourself for some artistic license? I’m asking because of your choice of colours on the artillery crew’s uniforms and you citing Tarleton’s Quarter as an “inspiration”. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with painting fantasy uniforms – and maybe the idea of using a coherent colour scheme is due to having painted GW armies and the like before.

As said, nothing wrong with that. However, be prepared to encounter some people who are, let’s say, less forgiving in regards of historical armies. Apart from any detail or button-counting they could, for example, point out their confusion about the artillerymen’s leatherware being dyed green (which is, in fact, quite hard to achieve). For such cases you should have an answer at hand, something in the line of Henry Hyde’s alternative 18th century setting.

However, if that’s not what you’re after, I strongly recommend some reading (or asking) on the subject of uniforms. With Americans you have only a few limits in colouring, but there are some. You really don’t have to paint in all possible details, a basic paintjob in the right (i.e. accepted) colours is totally fine. For Contiental artillerymen that would be: blue coat, white vest, white breeches and socks (or, where applicable, white or brown trousers) and red cuffs and turnbacks; straps and belts should be white as well, whereas pouches and bayonet holders were usually made of black leather. That makes them very distinct on the battlefield, but artillerymen were a proud bunch after all. ;-)

Furthermore, you could achieve better pics quite easily: Just take your models outside. Avoid direct sun or flash light at all cost. Set your camera on close-up (mostly a flower icon) and provide some kind of stand (some books will do). Take as many photos as possible. Afterwards you can sort and probably enhance them with a free graphical programm. On the web a good picture is as important as a decent paintjob.

Finally, some notes on the latest podcast episode: I enjoyed the regular parts of “week in gaming” and “mailbag”. The theme wasn’t my cup of tea, since I find background music quite distracting. However, and it’s maybe just me, I missed some enthusiasm on side of your dialogue partner. He sounded rather disinterested and somewhat cranky for the most part. Perhaps that’s due to him being not completely sold on historical gaming yet?
Anyway, I still loved to hear from you again. Thanks for your effort!

Hi Tilman. I appreciate you bringing this up. After reading your comment I realized that I sprinkled my modus operandi across multiple postings but never fully explain my plan for my army.

Before getting into anything pertaining to historicals I hesitated. As Henry later said there would be people who would count buttons, check to see which year and unit is depicted, and verify the colors used for accuracy. This will be peculiar considering that I majored in politics and history in college (focusing on Colonial Northeast American history). But, I’m not one who cares about depicting forces in a historically accurate light.

Using historically accurate miniatures for such things as education, review, and examination are noble pursuits. Under those circumstances I would strive to push my mediocre skills to their limits in an effort to produce accurate looking models.

The Black Powder game, for me, is just that. That belief allows me greater freedom. There are limits to how far astray I will go. For example, you won’t see me giving people polkadots (did that for a GW Fenbeast many moons ago) or metallic pants.

1) Paint 3 distinct colors on each figure
2) Strive to be historically accurate but don’t let that stifle my creativity
3) Base each figure using flock and some Woodland Scenics products but don’t go crazy on the basing
4) Quickly and neatly paint each figure to a gaming standard where a regiment will look decent from 2-3 feet away.
5) Limit the number of coats, custom mixes, highlighting, drybrushing, and inking.

Of those five I have adhered to #1, #4, and #5. I believe #2, with a stretch, is true for my militia. As you kindly mention I stray a long distance away from historically accuracy with the Artillerymen. The third guideline has not been approached but adherence to it is expected.

Along the way the historical accuracy has become less and less important. Now it has fallen from my radar. That is sad but true.

It is hugely important to me that the army look cohesive. I am striving to achieve that through a limited palette and alternating color placement. The militia will continue with the hodgepodge approach. Any Continental soldiers will adhere to the scheme used on the Artillerymen.

My camera skills are completely absent. There is a picture of a JR Miniatures Colonial house that I really enjoy. All those pictures were taken, as you suggest, outside with indirect sunlight. Sadly, most of my photography, and I hesitate to call it that, are taken inside with my iPhone.

I know Drew already responded about the latest show. However, I want to thank you for your feedback. It is never easy to give less than positive feedback. Constructive comments better the show and they are greatly desired.

I appreciate Drew pushing himself to stay up to record with me. Bailey Records’ game soundtracks have been on my shelf for months. In fact, they were supposed to be reviewed on this show near the beginning of the year. Drew’s musical background would, I felt, provide a solid counter to my inexperience when reviewing the CDs. He isn’t a historical gamer preferring, instead, to play 40k and D&D.

Reviewing soundtracks for RPGs won’t be the norm for the show. I really enjoy the music and do listen to it while doing many things. At the end of the day they are roleplaying game soundtracks and not intended as background music for historical (or my historical fantasy) gaming. Something with fife and drums would better suit that. Looking at the download statistics it seems that listeners agree with you Tilman. There’s 53 downloads of Episode 61 compared to 92 downloads for Episode 60 (in the same time period Episode 60 had more downloads).

The next recording will feature an interview with Derek Lloyd, and Chase Laquidara, of Battleground Games & Hobbies. I expect it will be a lot of fun and very interesting.

I really appreciate all the comments from everyone. Don’t worry Tilman. I didn’t take it personally with the pictures. You have a blog to run and you own projects to work on. I am delighted people listen to my show and visit this blog at all.

Sorry about coming off as a bit cranky. It wasn’t my intention. I work the overnight shift and stayed up late (for me) to be able to help out. The day wound up a bit too warm to take a nap before the recording to be as fresh as possible. I promise to do my best not to record in too tired a state again in the future. I appreciate the feedback though! Live and learn.

Hi guys,
I’m much relieved that you didn’t take my criticism too serious. It’s never easy to – even slightly – criticise something you appreciate; the more when it’s offered completely for free.
After all, I didn’t want to sound negative. If I did, please be assured that it’s mainly due to me not being a native-speaker. I’m really looking forward to your next episode and some project updates as well. :-)
Cheers
Tilman

Maybe the best road to travel is to create a fictional American force, which I am depicting. This fictional force does things their own way and are considered peculiar by their peers. They dress funny. Their equipment looks odd. They don’t fight in the standard way. Their leader is unusual. There’s generally something odd about them because they don’t fit in. Square peg in the round hole.

This might be trying too hard to provide cover for my curious paint scheme. But, it might be a good melting together of Henry Hyde’s fictional countries and my desire to play American Revolutionary battles. Another plus is I can try to rope my wife to lend her creative talents to assist me (she writes beautiful poetry) in breathing life into my models.

She’s already helped to pick which sculpts of the Perry command squad I’ll use. And….big surprise. She’s going to be a guest on my show to talk about being married to a gamer. :)

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